


Stop All The Clocks

by Fair_Feather_Friend



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Death Averted, Clocks, Fix-It, Gen, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22582651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fair_Feather_Friend/pseuds/Fair_Feather_Friend
Summary: There's not one clock, nor two, but three.The first clock stands proudly in the Hamilton's home watching over all. The incessant ticking barely noticed as the two men, Miranda Barlow loves most, kiss and she looks on.The third clock looms in the shadows. It is there in this faraway place that no one is meant to find. It should not be. It cannot be. It hears two impossible words with the power to change the past and thus the future.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Miranda Barlow/Thomas Hamilton, Peter Ashe/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 13
Kudos: 28
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enviropony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enviropony/gifts).



> Title from W H Auden's Funeral Blues. 
> 
> He was my North, my South, my East and West,  
> My working week and my Sunday rest,  
> My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;  
> I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
> 
> Treat.

There's not one clock, nor two, but three. 

The first clock stands proudly in the Hamilton's home watching over all. The incessant ticking barely noticed as the two men, Miranda Barlow loves most, kiss and she looks on. She remembers all those memories both good and bad. 

She is haunted by that day her husband was torn from her. 

~

The third clock looms in the shadows. It is there in this faraway place that no one is meant to find. It should not be. It cannot be. It hears two impossible words with the power to change the past and thus the future. 

~

The second clock stands shamefully, a ticking bomb, a declaration of guilt. 

Miranda Barlow looks at the second. She sees the first. Her life that was. All that she loved.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

Her husband so vibrant and alive. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

She sees the present. This man she called friend in possession of the clock. She's furious. She wants to rage. 

A gun shot.

Blood. 

Then darkness.

The clock continues to tick.

He lives... lives... lives... lives... 

And so does she.

She sees the future. A darkened room. A flicker of hope. 

The ruins of her husband, a broken man, older than she remembers him. 

He lives. He lives. The clock promises.

"Your clock by the wall where did you obtain it?" Miranda asks. 

"What?" Peter Ashe asks, confused by this turn of conversation.

"It looks very much like one that used to reside in my house in London. Identical, in fact. I don't remember gifting it to you. It was there when I left. So I ask again, how is it you came to possess that clock?" 

"It was a gift."

Miranda knows the truth. She can feel the lie. She can taste her doom. That gun shot and then nothing. 

"Did Thomas give it to you?" Miranda asks. She knows it for a lie but Peter grasps hold of it.

"Yes, when I visited him."

"You cared deeply for him, did you not, and he for you." There was a perhaps there, if James had not swept into their lives. A past too that she daren't think of now. Had Peter been jealous? Resentful? "All these years it never sat right with me how I was told of Thomas' death. Even if he had lost everything he was not the sort of man to take his own life."

Miranda looked at the clock. "Please Peter, for the friendship we had, if there's the slightest possibility that he still lives, you'd tell us."

James is shocked, as is Peter. 

She knows. She knows. She knows. 

At first he voices denial, but now she can see it, oh so clear. The light is golden. The new world then, not the old. Her husband has travelled far and yet they still have much to go. 

Where is that other clock?

"Where is he?" Miranda asks again.

And Peter Ashe tells them.


	2. Epilogue

Despite his protests they persuaded Peter Ashe to guide them to the plantation, leveraging their rescue of Abigail as a bargaining chip against him. They travelled together as old friends, making plans for a better, brighter, future and it reminded Miranda of all she had once had. 

All that Peter Ashe had destroyed. 

Miranda smiled at him and pretended to be his friend as he had to her so many years ago all the time nursing her rage. She dreamed of killing him a thousand ways as had been done to Alfred Hamilton. She may not have wielded the blade but it had been done at her command. 

She was no longer Penelope, waiting patiently, but instead Odyseus, on the last leg of her ten year voyage. 

She dreamed of slaughter. Odysseus laying waste to the suitors that had plagued beloved Penelope. But there was a better way, a first resort not a last. 

They passed through the gates, the light golden, the fields shimmering bright and a sense of peace washed over Miranda. She charmed the guardians, while letting James seek out Thomas in the light. 

Miranda stepped into the darkness, looked up at the impossible clock, it was hers as much as the one in Charlestown was. She paused a moment to offer thanks.

And then in quiet words she explained matters to the owner, she shed tears, her lies never tasting so sweet. She pressed her jewels, and many more into his hands, extracting a promise in return.

They came for Peter, protesting, struggling, claiming he did not belong, ranting, raving, delusions of grandeur and then sobbing with despair. 

As the clock struck its final hour, Miranda Hamilton stepped out into the light to join her husband and their love. She did not look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't intend to write this but this comment is to blame: "I accept that Peter's a dead man here! I'd like to think Miranda and James went out a window overnight and just razed this town as it woke up. Or maybe Miranda was way more forward-thinking and had Peter taken later, when his guard was down. That seems more her style."
> 
> I got to thinking, what would Miranda do? How could she make Peter suffer most? There's a poetic justice to leaving him to Thomas' fate.
> 
> BUT I think James returns to retrieve their money and kill Peter.

**Author's Note:**

> Clocks! The first in the Hamilton's home, the second in Peter Ashe's House, the third on the plantation. I don't have a screenshot of the first one but the other two are here and a close up. https://imgur.com/a/6tGAwqB


End file.
